Public schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced teacher tenure decisions for the 2012-2013 school year this week.
The Department of Education (DOE) reports that of the 3,920 teachers who received decisions, 53 percent of teachers were approved tenure, compared to 55 percent in 2011-2012 and 97 percent in 2006-2007.
In the 2010-2011 school year, the DOE instituted a new approach to teacher tenure, asking principals to provide detailed evidence to support their recommendations. That has led to more rigorous reviews of those up for tenure, according to the DOE
“If you turned back the clock, tenure was an automatic right and not something earned. But that’s changed. We expect more of our teachers as we raise the bar for students like never before. I want to congratulate all those who were granted tenure,” Walcott said.
Under state law, a teacher who has completed his or her “probationary period,” typically the first three years of teaching, is eligible to be granted tenure.
Principals must support their tenure recommendations with evidence of a teacher’s effectiveness in the categories of teacher practice, student learning, and contributions to the school community. Principals collect data from classroom observations, quality of student work, progress on state assessments, attendance, and student and parent feedback, among other measures.
Walcott said. “We are not only keeping our best teachers in city schools through our more rigorous tenure process, but coupled with our new evaluation system, Advance, we’re developing them into even better educators. We’ve made extraordinary strides in investing in our most important assets: those doing the challenging and invaluable work of teaching our children each and every day.”
Starting next school year, Advance, the city’s new evaluation system, will deliver even richer data to help principals support their tenure recommendation.
Untied Federation of Teachers (UFT) President Michael Mulgrew called the announcement by the DOE “self-congratulatory” and said that it ignores the bigger issue of DOE’s overall poor handling of public schools.
“In the teeth of the worst recession in decades, more than one-third of the over 6,800 teachers hired in 2006-2007 left New York City public schools of their own accord, largely because of the DOE’s mismanagement and its obsession with test prep rather than real education,” he said.